Most of our clients link to other websites. Linking to other sites can help increase your relevancy rating with the search engines (SEs). When they reciprocate, the inbound links can help with your search engine rankings as well - provided the link is wrapped around keyword-rich text that is relevant to your content.

But just as valid links can help you, dead or broken links can hurt you. When a website has been around for a while, it be a plus in the eyes of the search engines if you have continually added fresh content. But if your site suffers from “link rot” - old links to pages that have been renamed, dropped or relocated and links to now defunct websites - your SE ranking can be hurt by them. Defunct or non-working links show Google et al that your site is not being maintained - and they may penalize you for it.

None of us is perfect. I’ve had dead links on my sites as well. Websites need to be checked regularly. Links to outside pages and sources can break. Even internal links to web pages and images can break over time. A regular link check is the only way to be sure that your website is functioning as you intended.

To help OrangeCat customers prevent “link rot,” we’ve set up a monthly program to check the links on your website and report the results to you. We use proven software to scan your website(s) on a monthly basis and report any problems so you can fix them - or have us or your webmaster do it.

This is really important. Your website is your lifeblood and it’s importance to your business will only increase over time - but only if you make site maintenance one of your cardinal principles.

And if you’re an OrangeCat Gold customer, the LinkChek service is FREE.

More information on OrangeCat’s LinkChek service can be found here.